Schaeuble: EU needs flexible speeds

It is not realistic to take further steps towards European Union integration at this point and after Britain’s vote to leave the bloc its remaining members must be ready to form ‘coalitions of the willing’, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said.

“Given the current situation, it is not realistic to think that we can take further steps towards deepening European integration at the moment,” he said on Thursday on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington.

“We need to respond to urgent questions in a way that is visibly European, and we need to find European solutions to acute problems,” he added, “We need flexible speeds, variable groupings of countries, ‘coalitions of the willing’, whatever you want to call it in a particular situation.”